Tuesday - Welcome to Liverpool

Foggy, foggy, foggy, foggy!!! That's the only word to describe today Foggy!!!!!

We had a quickly breakfast at the Shamrock Restaurant in our hotel and made our way to the dock to catch the ferry to Liverpool. It wasn't a luxury ferry but rather a rather bare bones kind of ship. But it turned out to be very comfortable and Jean Marie even fell asleep for a few hours as did half of the other passengers.

I couldn't believe how the fog just enveloped us but from time to time I was able to see some things in the distance like a tiny little wooden lighthouse that was oddly placed about 500 feet from the Dublin shoreline.

We also saw an oil rig out in the middle of the ocean which was oddly mesmerizing. As we approached it looked like some kind of science fiction pod with a flame coming out of the large smoke stack and the closer we got the more it intrigued me and mom. There's something about a large structure looming out of the ocean to keep you watching especially when a helicopter came out of nowhere and landed gracefully on the edge of the rig. In the picture if you look in the sky over to the left of the rig you'll see the red helicopter coming in for a landing.

We surprisingly had a fantastic lunch at the ferry's restaurant and the staff were all so accommodating.

When we were about two hours from Liverpool the mountains along the Wales shoreline showed themselves and they were dressed in snow. Also about a half hour later mom and I were so excited to see, once again in rising from the open ocean, tons of those fabulous metal environmental windmills. The Sea Zone Wind Farms as they are called are in several places near Liverpool. I love them and to see them just appear through the fog was so fabulous.

We arrived in Liverpool around 5:00pm and it was already dark so this picture of the skyline is a bit dark but I was surprised at how much the skyline reminded me of the view of Jersey City from the Manhattan side of the river. After a bit of time getting to our hotel we manged to check ourselves into the Radisson Blu and were out for a leisurely walk around the neighborhood within a half hour.

We then spent the rest of the evening relaxing in our very modern, very lovely room. I really like this hotel and the staff, especially Katie at the front desk are so friendly and have gone out of their way to make us happy. Katie interestingly was just in New York City, before the storm hit fortunately, and her boyfriend proposed to her in Central Park. I'm such a hopeless romantic and I loved her story about how he had planned the whole thing even asking her parents right before they flew out if he had their permission to marry her.